CDC finds childhood vaccine exemptions for personal or religious reasons hit new record
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Aug. 17, 2026, 5:09 PM EDTBy Erika Edwards
The number of parents in the U.S. choosing not to vaccinate their children rose dramatically in the last school year, according to data released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
All states require certain vaccines for children entering public school. During the 2025-26 school year, 4.2% of kindergartners, about 155,000 kids, had at least one vaccine exemption, up from 3.6%the previous school year. The vast majority of those exemptions were labeled as "non-medical," meaning that parents or caregivers were opting out of the shots for personal or religious, rather than health, reasons. Medical exemptions remained stable at 0.2%.
Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to drive down the number of vaccines recommended for kids, a move that drew widespread criticism from pediatricians and public health advocates.
However, the new data reflects a trend of families resisting school vaccine requirements that began during the height of the Covid pandemic.
Forty-one states and Washington, D.C., reported increases in exemptions, according to the CDC.
The rise is "disappointing, but not surprising," said Dr. David Margolius, director of the Cleveland Department of Public Health. "It's indicative of the lack of clear messaging at the national level about vaccines." Ohio's vaccine exemption rate was at 5.7%, according to the CDC data, up from 4.7% the year before.
Routine vaccination coverage for kindergartners dropped to 92% for the shot that protects against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough (DTaP), and 92.4% for the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccines.
That's far lower than the 95% of the community that medical experts say need to be vaccinated against measles to prevent outbreaks.
This year marked a 35-year high in the nation's number of measles cases. As of Monday, the country had logged 2,566 cases in 2026 alone, with ongoing outbreaks in several states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah.
The continued spread threatens the nation's status of having eliminated measles from circulation achieved in 2000. The Pan American Health Organization is expected to make a decision on that in November.
Two doses of the MMR vaccine offer 97% protection against measles, usually for life. The number of kindergartners without a record of having both of those shots before school was about 280,000 last year, the CDC said.
Nearly all people diagnosed with measles this year, 93%, were unvaccinated.
In a statement to the media, the CDC said it "continues to encourage parents to discuss vaccination options with their doctors."
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Nearly all people diagnosed with measles this year, 93%, were unvaccinated.
We are Having the same problem in Australia, though our figures are not as bad as this. Some parents will never learn !!!!!!
My granddaughter will be getting all her vaccinations because not only is my daughter and her husband good parents she is also a NICU nurse.
What bothers me is that people don't understand herd immunity. I got a nasty comment from someone here a long time ago who stated what am I worried about if my children are vaccinated (she was a radical anti-vaxxer). It has nothing to do with that. There are immunocompromised people (children) who cannot get vaccinated because of their condition. That's the whole point of herd immunity is keeping those people safe.
I'm wondering if a future court will let children who are left with permanent harm from being unvaxed sue their parents for neglect?
I really hope so
probably, and future republicans, if any are left after 2028, will try to figure out a way for taxpayers to foot that bill ...
They will learn when their child dies, needlessly.
no worries, if they're good little maga thumpers they've got another half dozen kids in reserve ...
Some people are not fit to be parents. Or are negligent with their children's healthcare.
It's not like those with more than half a brain didn't see this coming. We just found out that there were fewer of us left than we thought in the last election, so we ended up with...
I did my part....
I mentally blackmailed my own foxtarded mother to get her covid vax and the booster ...
... but I will be eternally grateful for the contributions of FOX to help eliminate a lot of their audience with covid misinformation.
What possible religious reason could there be? Where in the Bible does it say “thou shalt not get the jab?”
This sure looks like people are just jobbing the system. They know that the First Amendment can be abused to excuse almost anything and the Supreme Court’s standard for evaluating these claims is pitiful.
Mennonites and Amish are notorious for not getting vaccinated. This latest measles outbreak started in a Texas Mennonite community
there's only one type of jab thumpers get for religious reasons ...
the one to increase the number of thumpers...
I'm probably going to burn in thumper hell for all the innocent little thumpers I took to the dark side in high school ...
They went willingly, didn't they?
oh yeah, they knew what they were in for. I was like a rite of passage, a college prep course, or a sex, drugs, and rock and roll hippie fantasy ...
linda was a very enthusiastic first date. she and I fell asleep from exhaustion at the drive-in and slept thru her curfew by 3 hours. when the date was over and we were driving down the street to her house, she spotted her dad sitting on a lawn chair in the driveway. I pulled over and let her out to walk the rest of the way home at her suggestion ...
chicken....
53+ years later and I'm still breathing ...
when I was a senior, I deliberately incapacitated the cheerleaders drunken jock boyfriends at the big game after parties on friday nights with hallucinogenics, so that their spirit bunny girlfriends were free to go a few laps with us longhairs on saturday nights. bonus - they were all on birth control ...
ok...you're a smart chicken
Good question
According to Gemini:
I won’t speak to Islam, but nothing about Christianity is supposed to work like that.
"Religious" exemptions is the biggest BS cop out of an excuse there is. Diseases do not care what religion someone is and willfully remaining unvaccinated not only puts one at risk, it also puts others at risk.
It's just another one of those things where people have a weird prejudice and then justify it by claiming, "muh religion!"
In truth, there is nothing in any of these religions that compels people to avoid vaccines. For that to be true, they would have to genuinely open-minded on the topic, or even just pro-vaccine. And then, after consulting scripture, they would change their mind only because their faith demands it. They would have to be able say, "gee i want the vaccine, but the rules of my faith just don't allow for that." But that is not happening.
Just as a personal example, I am a Christian. A pretty liberal Christian, but whatever. As I have become more committed to my faith, I find I am compelled to be more generous, more patient, more forgiving. I think more about others than I used to. I try to love unconditionally. I'm not perfect, by any means, but the teachings of Jesus have genuinely prompted me to change my mindset and behavior.
If someone had that kind of transformation about vaccines, I would buy it. But I don't think anyone does.
You like the Beatitudes, don't you? Yeah, me, too and I'm not even Christian
Yeah I don’t think you need to believe Jesus was the son of God to be inspired by his ministry. I don’t need to be Hindu to be inspired by Ghandi. I don’t need to be black to be inspired by Martin Luther King.
None of these anti-vaxxers got their inspiration from any of these people. Their feeble minds were shaped by the same tired, white supremacist rednecks who have always wanted to justify their life of ignorance by insisting that “college boys” are secretly stupid and hate America.
using religion as an excuse is simply the easiest way out for the willfully ignorant that believe it's indisputable as a defense ...
Ghandi was a political leader, not a spiritual leader. (He fought for "social justice".)
There are a lot of really stupid people in this world. Some are religious, some are not.
Idjits raising idjits in their own image